Richard Thompson is readying the 20th solo studio album of his nearly six-decade career. The prolific and influential British guitarist will share Hippies, Thugs, and Heroes on October 16 via New West. His follow-up to 2024’s Ship to Shore is led by a raucous bar-rock ditty appropriately titled “Cocaine Walking, Booze Talking.” Listen below.
“It’s so much fun to mess around at home and disappear down into the basement for hours at a time,” Thompson said of demoing the album in a press statement. “I even bought myself a drum kit. So I was able to present more complete demos to the band. You could say there’s much more of my identity being transferred to the final product.”
A 2020 box set gathered the complete discography of Richard Thompson and his former wife, Linda, who performed and recorded as a married duo between the years of 1972 and 1982. In 2022, Thompson reissued his score to Werner Herzog’s 2005 documentary Grizzly Man, which he made alongside Jim O’Rourke and guitarist Henry Kaiser.
Revisit the Sunday Review of Richard and Linda Thompson’s I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight.
Hippies, Thugs, and Heroes:
01 Sorcerer’s Apprentice
02 Cocaine Walking, Booze Talking
03 Pauper’s Grave
04 Unsung Hero
05 Make Believe You Don’t Know Me
06 She Burns It All
07 Everybody’s Stealing
08 The Soul In Me
09 Pipe Dreams
10 The Big Smoke
11 Stringer
12 Siren
